Robert McAlmon is one of the major, though neglected, literary figures of the 1920s. He stood at the center of the whole phenomenon known to legend as "the lost generation," that extraordinary company of expatriate writers who for a decade turned Paris into the literary capital of the English-speaking, as well as the French-speaking, world. McAlmon wrote in many forms--fiction, poetry, criticism, autobiography--and, it must be confessed, his poetry is less distinguished than his work in other genres. He also ran the Contact Editions press, which published several seminal works, including Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans (1925) and William Carlos Williams's Spring and All (1923). In the end, however, McAlmon's own work degenerated and his reputation has become obscured; too often he appears only as a footnote to more distinguished careers and lives.

Robert McAlmon was born in Kansas on 9 March 1896. His father, John Alexander McAlmon, was an Irishman...